The singer-songwriter-guitarist will celebrate his 39th birthday Saturday with a concert by his band, the Matt Angus Thing, at the Stanhope House in Stanhope. But he's not just the "talent" for the evening. His Clinton-based company, Black Potatoe Entertainment, runs the venerable blues and roots-music club. He will also tape the show for a DVD, to be released by his Black Potatoe Records label.

Of course, it's not like he'll do everything himself. He has lined up a long list of guest artists, for starters. Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Garth Hudson (of the Band) and Bernie Worrell (of George Clinton's Parliament and Funkadelic ensembles) will perform, as will John Ginty (who has played with Citizen Cope and Robert Randolph), Anthony Morgan's Inspirational Choir of Harlem, and Black Potatoe Records artists Kathy Phillips and Gregg Cagno.

The band will start with a setlist, he says, "but as the guests come in, we'll play it more by ear. Both Bernie and Garth have recorded on albums that I've put out, so I assume we'll do the material that they played on. And at the end, we'll try to get everyone up there."

The music will draw on a wide range of styles: rock, blues, folk, country, gospel. It's a mix not unlike the one the Stanhope House presents every week.

"We're trying to keep the genre of roots music alive," says Angus. He feels it's important, he says, to support bands that record for independent labels instead of the majors that tend to dominate the music industry, and are increasingly unwilling to support unknown artists.

"We're in the era of, a band is on 'American Idol' or they don't get signed," he says. "The (major) labels are pretty much incompetent at this point.

"I'm waiting for them to release Beatles albums that just go alphabetically: 'Beatles Songs With the Letter A.' That's all they can do -- re-release their old catalogs -- and that's pretty much all they want to do. They don't want to take a chance."

The (intentionally misspelled) Black Potatoe company, which became a partner in the Stanhope House in May, also presents an annual festival on the grounds of the Red Mill Museum in Clinton that's devoted to indie artists.

The Stanhope House is about as far from the music-industry mainstream as you can get.

A centuries-old roadhouse that has, at different times, housed a hotel, a post office and even a Prohibition-era bar that Babe Ruth is said to have patronized, the Stanhope House became a leading blues venue in the 1970s. Muddy Waters played there. So did John Lee Hooker, Willie Dixon, Stevie Ray Vaughan and countless other blues luminaries.

In the 1990s, the club diversified its bookings, and started presenting more shows by jam bands and other non-blues acts.

Over his half-year at the club, Angus has booked blues artists like James Cotton, Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials, Eddie Shaw and David "Honeyboy" Edwards. But he has also brought in everyone from power-pop singer-songwriter Marshall Crenshaw to bluegrass king Ralph Stanley.